Author's Note: So... tired... going to sleep now...
Story Title: "Shadows"
Story Summary: The Scoobies have one question for the Doctor. "You couldn't have just told us what Glory was?"
Shadows
Part I
.
The Doctor knew he was in for it the moment he entered the Magic Box. Every single one of the Scoobies were there, giving him the kind of annoyed look he usually got from Donna.
"What?" the Doctor asked.
"You couldn't have just told us?" Buffy demanded. "You knew from the very beginning what Glory was, and you couldn't have at least dropped us a hint?"
"I did tell you!" the Doctor insisted. "Glory is a twelfth dimensional being, whose…"
"In twenty syllable words!" Buffy shouted. "What about telling us in totally plain, normal, ordinary one-syllable words?"
The Doctor scratched the back of his neck. He glanced over at Donna, hoping for some help, but Donna seemed to be just as annoyed.
"Don't look at me, sunshine," she said. "I'm on their side."
The Doctor turned back to the Scoobies. "See, thing is, there isn't really any way to describe her in one-syllable words."
The Scoobies all looked at one another. Then back at the Doctor. Then they all said, in unison:
"She's a god."
"One syllable words," Buffy pointed out. "See?"
Donna's jaw dropped open.
The Doctor just frowned. "Sorry, we are talking about… your Glory, here, yes? Red dress? Curly hair? Bit barmey?"
"Yeah," said Xander. "You know. Glory. The evil hell goddess."
The Doctor gave a small laugh. "She's not a god."
"So you're saying that, if she broke free from her mortal prison, she wouldn't be an all-powerful, all-knowing entity, able to strike down those around her with just a thought, able to hurl thunderbolts and manipulate the universe on a whim, and completely invulnerable to all harm?" Buffy asked.
"Ah," said the Doctor. "Actually… pretty much."
Donna smacked him across the top of the head. "That's a god, dumbo!" she shouted.
"Glory is not a god!" the Doctor protested. "She may want to believe she is, but really, really, she's not! At all! She's a twelfth dimensional being. That's it!"
"It's not like we were going to worship her if you told us she was a god," said Buffy. "We just would have appreciated a heads-up about the whole can't-actually-be-killed thing."
"Who? Glory?" the Doctor asked. "Nah. Course she can be killed! Twelfth dimensional being? Did it all the time back during the War."
"Wait, you what?" Willow asked.
"We killed them. Well, the ones who joined the Daleks, at any rate." The Doctor shrugged. "War across all of time and space? Horrors more terrifying than anything you could possibly imagine? Every twelfth dimensional being worth its salt wanted in on it. We figured out a way to get rid of them." He glanced off into the distance, a sad, lost expression spreading across his face. "There was a reason that even the White and Black Guardians fled the War in terror."
Everyone looked at everyone else. A spark of hope appearing in all their eyes.
"How'd you do it?" asked Xander.
"Yeah, how can we get rid of Glory?" Willow said.
The Doctor shuffled, awkwardly, scratching the back of his neck. "Well, actually…"
The Scoobies all looked at one another, then settled back into their angry faces. They started muttering things like, "Just like the Mayor all over again", and "Never willing to help us out when we need it most."
Buffy didn't join them. She just gave the Doctor a steady look.
"What's the catch?" Buffy asked.
"Well, see, there is a way to kill a twelfth dimensional being," the Doctor explained. "It's just not… something… you lot would really want to do."
"What do you mean?" asked Willow.
"There are three obvious ways I can see to getting rid of your problem," the Doctor explained. "One would be to stabilize Ben to this reality, fixing the imperfect prison system and allowing everyone to get on with their lives with no further bloodshed. But, seeing as how—"
"Oh, great!" said Xander. "He's changing the topic!"
"—you lot never seem to understand a word I say on that front, and my previous three attempts to intervene directly have resulted in the near-collapse of the universe, I think that way won't work too terribly well," the Doctor continued. "The second way would be to do what we did during the War. Which, all in all, isn't something I'm too terribly keen to do."
"And that method would entail… what, exactly?" Giles asked.
"Detonating the nearest star," the Doctor explained, " and most of the surrounding stars, then drawing them together into a gigantic gravitational field comprised of twelve supernovas and thirteen black holes, compressed using a super-concentrated plasma core with transdimensional anchors to support it."
"Um…" said Xander.
"Hang on," said Willow, "did you just say that, to get rid of Glory, you'd need to blow up the sun?"
"Your sun, and the nearest 24 stars surrounding it," the Doctor agreed.
The Scoobies all looked at one another.
"Okay, all in favor of not doing that?" Xander asked.
"Couldn't it be a different sun?" Buffy proposed. "Like, you take her somewhere else in your TARDIS?"
"Somehow, I think giving Glory full access to a super-duper time machine might be a very, very big mistake," said the Doctor.
"I'm kind of impressed that you Time Lord guys were able to find that many groups of 25 stars without life on the surrounding planets during the War," Willow said. "I mean, I thought the universe was filled with life!"
The Doctor didn't answer this. There was no point in revealing to these humans how desperate they'd really been during the War. What horrors and atrocities even his own side had committed.
"And the third way to stop Glory?" Buffy asked.
The Doctor met her eyes with his. "You know that one already."
Buffy said nothing.
The Doctor sighed, and ran a hand through his hair. "There is… a fourth way," he admitted.
"What fourth way?" Buffy asked.
"A bluff, really," the Doctor said. "Glory only wants to go home to take revenge. Her two co-rulers pushed her out, and locked her up here. They didn't fight in the War, of course, but, well, enough others of their kind had that I thought… if I could find a way to convince her that her two co-rulers were dead, and that I'd been the one who killed them…"
"She'd take revenge on you, instead," Buffy realized. She just stared at him. "Glory would kill you."
"I'm not that easy to kill," the Doctor reminded her.
"Yeah, but you're not immortal, either!" said Buffy. "And you're not completely invulnerable to any harm! Glory is!"
"Glory's on a deadline," the Doctor said. "And she exists in enough dimensions that she can remember me, even when you lot can't. The best way to get her to miss her deadline is to give her someone else to chase."
Buffy and the Doctor said nothing, for several long seconds, just looking at one another. As if trying to silently confer with one another, trying to reach out to one another in a way beyond the comprehension of any in the room.
"Actually, it's not a terribly bad plan," Giles muttered. He rushed over and started searching through books. "If we could just… isolate the source of Glory's invulnerability… well, we might not be able to kill her. But we could harm her. Slow her down enough that she'd be unable to kill the Doctor before she misses her deadline."
"And afterwards?" Willow asked.
"I thought afterwards Donna and the Doctor were just going to run away in their blue box thing," said Tara.
"Glory's still going to be mega-pissed, though," said Willow. "If we screw up her plans. She's not just going to let this go. She's going to get her revenge on all of us, and then she's going to get her revenge on you, too, Doctor."
"And if she can't harm you directly," said Buffy, "she'll find some other way to make you suffer." She nodded over at Donna.
Donna glanced around at the others. "What are you all looking at me for?"
They all looked away.
"It's likely that, seeing as the Doctor is a rather… formidable enemy," Giles explained, "Glory might come after you, instead."
"Me?" Donna cried. She stared at them. "But… but… but I'm not important! I'm just a temp! I don't matter!"
"And Giles was a jobless slacker for a year," said Xander. "But that's not about to stop Glory from going all evil Hell Goddess on him."
"For the last time, she is not a goddess!" the Doctor insisted. "How many times do I have to say this?"
"Then why can't I touch her?" Buffy asked him. "I've gone up against her over and over again, and every time I hit her, it's like she doesn't feel anything."
The Doctor glanced around the Magic Box. Then, in a flash, he picked up a sword from a display case, and hurled it at the wall.
It thudded into the wood.
"Well, that's odd," said the Doctor, in mock surprise. "The sword went right through my left heart, yet I appear to be still alive and completely unharmed."
The Scoobies all looked at one another, in confusion.
"Uh, Doctor," said Buffy, "that sword went nowhere near you."
"No, see?" the Doctor said, pointing at the wall, where the sword was embedded. "Sword went right through my left heart. Perfect hit. Yet still…" He waved his hand. Then did a jumping jack.
Along the wall where the sword was embedded, his shadow did the same.
"You mean the sword went through your shadow?" Buffy asked. She noted that it did look like the Doctor had thrown the sword exactly where his shadow's left heart would have been.
"That's not my shadow!" insisted the Doctor. "It's me! It acts like me. Does whatever I do. It still looks a bit like me — well, as much as a shadow can, at any rate. It's me — a two-dimensional version of me. But even with the sword in my chest, I can still…" The Doctor hopped to the side, and his shadow did the same. "…do this."
"Oh!" said Willow. "Oh! I think I get it! The shadow's like your imprint in two dimensions, right? The trace part of you that exists in a two-dimensional world. But… the real you doesn't exist in two dimensions. You exist in three."
"Four," Buffy corrected.
"Well, four and a half, if you want to get technical about it," the Doctor admitted.
"But… Glory exists in way more dimensions than that!" said Willow. "All we can see of Glory is the part of her that exists in our dimensions, but that's not where she actually exists. When we attack Glory, it's like we're attacking her shadow. We can't harm her any more than attacking the Doctor's shadow could actually hurt the Doctor."
The Doctor beamed at Willow.
"So, in conclusion," said Giles, "we're not up against a goddess. We're up against someone who so much resembles a goddess that she might as well be referred to as a goddess."
"...well, if I suppose if it helps to think of it, that way…" the Doctor said.
"Uh-huh," said Xander. "I'm sticking to Hell Goddess."
"What about the plan?" asked Tara. "You know, the one we were talking about before?"
"You mean the one where we try to convince Glory to kill the Doctor?" asked Buffy. "And Donna? And all the rest of us? I'm thinking that plan isn't so ideal."
"She'd only go after the rest of you," the Doctor said, very quietly, "if she didn't finish me off, first. If she thinks she's found satisfaction, she'll let you lot go."
Buffy turned and glared at him. "Don't you even think about it!" Buffy hissed.
"Then what would you suggest?" the Doctor demanded. "I've tried to interfere directly! Over and over again! If I don't do this, you know what the alternative has to be!"
Buffy said nothing.
Across the room, Giles froze, as he seemed to realize what they were discussing. He sank down on a nearby chair, took off his glasses, and rubbed his eyes.
"What's he talking about, Buffy?" asked Willow.
"I believe," muttered Giles, "he's proposing letting Glory kill him, instead of…" He paused, as if about to say the name, then deciding against it. "…all the rest of us."
"Oh, you are kidding me!" shouted Donna.
Buffy and the Doctor ignored her.
"Doctor, you said if you interfered directly—" Buffy started.
"The universal shift only occurs when I'm about to destroy Glory," said the Doctor. "Not when she destroys me. If I could just find some way to convince her…"
That was when Buffy seemed to catch the words. "Hang on. If you could 'find some way'?"
The Doctor stepped back.
"Oi!" shouted Donna. "What's wrong with you people? We are not killing anyone! And definitely not Time Boy! Capiche?"
"Didn't the Doctor mention something about how Glory had some mortal weakness in our dimensions, earlier?" Tara asked.
"Hey, yeah!" said Willow. "He did!"
"Of course there's a weakness!" said the Doctor. "That's what I keep trying to tell you."
"So why didn't you tell us what it was before now, Spaceman?" Donna demanded. "We're not going to go off and let you kill yourself when we could use this other weakness, instead."
"I did tell you!" the Doctor insisted. "Glory is trapped on Earth in an imperfect three-dimensional prison. Ben!"
"Oh, great!" said Xander. "And he changes the topic! Again! I'm starting to think he's doing exactly what he did when we were fighting the Mayor, Will."
"Yeah," grumbled Willow. "I can see the similarities."
The Doctor's brow furrowed. "Mayor? You save the world on a daily basis, and you lot were caught up in campaign politics?"
"He hasn't done that, yet!" Buffy hissed at the rest of them.
"Yeah?" said Xander. "Well that doesn't mean I'm about to let Mr. I'm-Completely-Okay-With-Letting-You-All-Get-Eaten -By-A-Giant-Snake get away with not telling us anything again!"
"Giant snake?" the Doctor asked. His eyes widened. "You don't mean…? No, but that's impossible…" He glanced around at the rest of them. "Richard Wilkins?"
Buffy slapped her hand onto her forehead.
"Who's this Richard Wilkins bloke, then?" Donna asked.
"Oh, someone I met a long time ago," said the Doctor. "Long, long time ago. Had some mad cap scheme about turning into a demon. Giant snake, really. Daft plan, considering it'd take him a good hundred and fifty years to complete it, at which point, any old person could defeat him by simply waiting until he'd fully transformed, then using enough firepower to completely destroy a major building. Like, say, a church, or an office building, or…"
"A school," Xander said.
The Doctor shrugged. "Yes, suppose that could work."
"Xander, don't you dare—" Buffy started, but she was too late.
"And you knew all along!" Xander said. "You knew exactly how to defeat the Mayor, and every single time we asked you, you never told us a single word!"
The Doctor blinked. "I didn't?"
"I can't believe this," Buffy muttered.
"What, really?" the Doctor asked. "Nothing at all? Not a single little itty bitty hint?" He gave a small shrug. "I'll have to remember that."
"That's right!" Xander said. "You didn't tell us anything even remotely useful that entire time, not even the fact that we couldn't kill the Mayor until after he turned into a giant snake! No, you just sat on the sidelines, laughing at us, even… though… we…" He trailed off, as he noticed the angry glares around him. "Okay. I can't help but notice that all of you are mad at me, now."
"Xander," said Buffy, "the Doctor hasn't done any of that, yet! He didn't even know what we did until you blabbed it to him! Now he has to stay silent when he gets to that spot in time, or he'll cause a massive, universe-destroying paradox!"
"Huh?"
"If he'd said something useful to us in high school," Buffy explained, "then you wouldn't have brought this whole thing up right now. And then the Doctor wouldn't have known about the Mayor, or the school getting blown up, or how we got around the completely invulnerable to any physical harm a hundred days before the Ascension thing, and…"
"Completely invulnerable to any physical harm?" the Doctor asked. "What, really?"
"…and I'm just making it worse," Buffy concluded.
"I suppose that explains the shift in the Earth's morphic field," the Doctor muttered, scratching his head. "Invulnerability. Yes… that must be how he did it. Channeling Jack's vortex energies through the morphic field of the planet. A bit brilliant, that. Barmy, but brilliant. Still, might cause some problems in about 10 years or so."
Xander didn't understand this, so he decided to ignore it. "I've still got no idea what I did wrong," said Xander. "It's alien-boy who was a total jerk! Not me!"
"I believe," said Giles, "although I honestly cannot fathom why, that until you brought the subject up, there was a chance the Doctor could have gone back and changed it."
"But… that makes no sense!" said Xander. "That all already happened! You can't just… go back and pretend it all happened differently!"
"Well, you can, sometimes," the Doctor said. "Depending on whether the event is fixed or in flux. It's like I was saying to Donna, see. Most events are—"
"You're confused, Xander," Willow cut in, noticing Xander's lost expression, "because you're pretending the Doctor lives like you. But he doesn't. He exists in four dimensions, not three. You're looking at the shadow, not the Doctor."
"Huh?" asked Xander.
"I think this time stuff just has to happen like that," Tara put in. "Like… in magic. For every good thing you create using magic, a bad thing follows. If you don't do magic, you might not understand that, but it still has to happen."
"Wait, so you're saying—" Xander started.
"We're saying that you screwed up," Buffy explained. "If you hadn't told the Doctor what his future was, he could have changed it. Got that?"
"Oh," said Xander. He shifted from foot to foot. "I'm… just… going to leave, now." He glanced around the room, then bolted out the door.
"All that aside," Giles said, turning back to the Doctor, "surely this Glory thing is not a paradox. Or if it is, perhaps there would be some way you could… get around it."
"No, it's not a paradox," the Doctor said. "It's some automatic reaction that's been written into the base-code of the universe. If I tell you what the weakness is, you lot forget it. Right away!"
"Wait, what?" asked Buffy.
The door to the Magic Box tingled open, and Dawn walked in. "Hey, what's up?" she asked.
"Dawn, what are you doing here?" asked Buffy.
"Hanging out," Dawn retorted. "What? You think I'm not grown up enough to handle your new Big Bad? Because… I can help! Really, I can."
"Donna," said Buffy, turning to her. "Could you take my sister and…?"
"Leave you alone, here, to send Spaceman off on some suicide mission?" said Donna. "Not likely!"
"Wow," said Dawn, looking at the gathered Scoobies. "I guess it's kind of tense in here."
"Skinny, here, has decided that the best way to protect the universe is to make your Big Bad take her revenge on him," Donna explained. "Which is not happening! But every time we try to get him to tell us some other way to defeat Miss Evilness, he changes the subject!"
"I'm not changing the subject!" the Doctor protested. "You just can't remember the answer after I finish telling it to you!"
"Wait, wait," said Willow, her brow furrowed in concentration. "Are you saying… that you've been telling us this weakness for weeks, now, and the moment we hear it, we forget?"
"Yes!" said the Doctor.
"Oh, you mean like those Silence guys?" said Dawn. "Because I've been keeping a tally for Buffy, and she's killed, like, hundreds of them since—"
"Hey, yeah, those Silence... kinda...!" Willow frowned. "Wait, what were we talking about, again?"
"Sorry, silent whats?" the Doctor asked.
"I think we're forgetting the subject at hand," said Giles. "First and foremost, we have to discover some way to defeat Glory."
"Maybe we could use magic to get around this memory-thing," Tara offered.
"If Dawn is correct, and this is similar to the Silence, then magic will do no good," said Giles. "We've tried magic on them, before, and the results are…"
"We don't know what the results are," said Tara, "because they're the Silence, and we can't remember them."
"As you say," Giles conceded. "So it stands to reason that magic would probably do nothing to defeat this sort of memory problem we're experiencing with Glory, either."
"Oh! What if we get the Silence to fight against Glory using this weakness thing?" said Dawn. "That'd be the most totally awesome fight ever!"
"Except… we wouldn't remember any of it," Tara pointed out. "At all."
"If the Doctor would simply tell us what this so-called weakness is," Giles said, "then we could have something to go on. But his dogged determination to skirt around the issue is helping no one!"
"Okay, I'm starting to get confused," said Willow. "What do the Silence have to do with Glory?"
"Oi!" said Donna. "What's this silent whats-it you keep going on about?"
Buffy didn't speak. She was watching the Doctor. Watching as he stood there, no longer hearing the words that buzzed around him, a horrible look of utter misery washing across his expression. Not just utter misery. It was almost like… the way he'd looked, when he'd lost his memory, and had realized that Buffy, who he'd thought was his friend, had staked a vampire. As if the rules of the universe couldn't possibly be so cruel as to let this happen to him. As if… he — the Doctor, the guy who always had all the answers — didn't know what to do.
Buffy stepped forwards. "Doctor?" she asked.
He turned his head to look at her. And Buffy realized.
He didn't.